Be Your Best Self: A reflection on fostering children’s motivation and self-regulation through metacognitive journals

Ella Louisa Martin, New Horizons Children’s Academy, The Thinking School Academy Trust, UK Over the past three academic years, the multi-academy trust that I work for have embarked on a journey to develop our children’s understanding of themselves as learners. This has coincided with a drive to embed evidence-informed teaching and learning across the trust to ensure that teachers can empower students to become lifelong learners and retain knowledge long term. In order to do this, we have looked at key concepts such as metacognition, self-regulation, growth mindset and motivation. Drawing together evidence and considering how we could apply it to our own context culminated in the creation and development of the Be Your Best Self journal from Key Stage 1 to Key Stage 5.  The rationale behind the journals The importance of metacognition for supporting students’ learning has long been promoted and it is a fast-growing field of interdisciplinary research. The Education Endowment